I’ve put a new Gallery on Flickr – Umbria, a series of photographs taken by Simon Moss last June. I’ve chosen some favourites to give you a flavour. Not the best photographs, necessarily, but the photos that say ‘Umbria’ the loudest. If you click on any of the photos below you’ll see a larger image…. Read more

Just a few days agon, on May 28th 2011, New Zealand BMX legend Jed Mildon performed a TRIPLE backwards somersault on a BMX. Luckily for us he was wearing a ‘Helmet Cam’ so we can see what the stunt looked like from his point of view, as well as the conventional onlookers view. It is… Read more

We’ve finally taken the plunge and offer online booking on The Chain Gang website. Why did I take so long? Well, most of our holidays are sold some time in advance, so we take a small deposit payment and the balance is collected sometimes months later. It’s not possible to take credit card details via… Read more

I think we’ve taken a very significant step towards realising a long-held Chain Gang dream. The biggest thing about The Chain Gang is that groups of people share a week of cycling together and become friends. When I’m guiding I regularly hear conversations around the dinner table every evening “how can we share our photopraphs… Read more

49%. Remember that number, and I’ll explain what it means. Last year I joined one of our Dordogne groups in September, just for a couple of days. I’d been with a group on the Bordeaux Winetrail the week before, and I think it’s a good idea to meet our groups when I have the chance…. Read more

Our first tours this year will be in the Dordogne, and in Devon, both starting on June 11th. The Dordogne is where we started, and is probably still my favourite. Ironically our first hotel, probably my favourite hotel of any of our tours and our strongest relationship, arose entirely by accident. My first experience… Read more

Yes, you read that right. In southern England we now have quite a lot of vineyards, and on our revised Devon bike tour we cycle past three of them. We visit two of them, so I thought it would be appropriate to introduce them to you. 1. Pebblebed Vineyards Devon is a long way North… Read more

Last month our Newsletter contained 5 items which I loosely labelled as ‘news’. The most popular proved to be the new photo galleries on Flickr. So, here’s another one for you. I asked Roberto Peixoto to send me his photos from cycling round Tuscany with The Chain Gang. Here’s a link to the gallery on… Read more

A few weeks ago I was in the ‘Lot et Garonne’ region of France as a guest of the French tourist board. They were showing off Lot et Garonne, and I was trying to see if it’s interesting enough to plan a new bike tour. I was there with several other tour operators involved with… Read more

Some weeks ago I set up a Chain Gang Facebook page. I didn’t tell anybody about it because I wanted to experiment to find out what it can do, what it can’t do. What would be useful, and what would just be so much ‘social media’ guff – no use to man nor ornament. A… Read more

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